Sentence examples for or imbecile from inspiring English sources

Terminology was important to the parents who fought on behalf of children who until the 1950s were labeled "moron" or "imbecile".

Leo observes the beautiful cornfield-coloured body of Ted Burgess for the first time; it "spoke to me of something I did not know... maturity in its most undeniable form", lying near-naked in the reeds, smiling "an intimate, pleased smile, that would have looked childish or imbecile on most people, but on him had the effect of a feather on a tiger".

Former President Nicolas Sarkozy famously lamented, for instance, that "La Princesse de Clèves," a 17th-century novel, had been included by a "sadist or an imbecile" in an examination for entry-level state administrative posts.

If not – if junior turns out to be an imbecile or a piddler or an addict – well, we knew there were risks when we "walked" into the "casino".

FolloWhennIsha Krishnan on Twaster.

Everyone else is a "moron", an "imbecile" or an "inchworm".

The question of Hamlet's madness translates effortlessly to Schweik: Is he really an imbecile or is he just pretending?

Often the diagnoses that got people put away were meaninglessly vague: imbecile, or feeble-minded (where the only proof might be having got pregnant out of wedlock).

The five-time Tour winner Jacques Anquetil told the French sports daily L'Équipe in the year Simpson died, "You'd have to be an imbecile or a hypocrite to imagine that a professional cyclist who rides 235 days a year can hold himself together without stimulants".

And its language on infirmity, asking householders if they were "lunatic, imbecile or feeble-minded", would be unlikely to pass muster with today's disability campaigners.

He was labelled either an imbecile or a traitor.